Many radio control aircraft modelers will be familiar with the process of cutting wings out of foam with the hot wire method. The tools are simple enough to build at home, and it’s an easy way of producing a lightweight set of wings without too much hassle. [IkyAlvin] walks a different path, however (YouTube link, embedded below).
Expanding foam is the key here – that wonderful sticky material in a can that never quite goes where you want it to. MDF and foam is used to create a mold to produce the wing forms. It’s then a simple matter of loading floor underlay into the mold to act as the outer skin, and then filling the mold with expanding foam and waiting for it to cure.
The final parts are assembled into a flying wing, and the first test flight is remarkably successful. Using foam overlay as a skin also has the added benefit of providing a sleek silver finish to the aircraft. It goes to show that there’s always room to explore alternative techniques outside of the mainstream. If you’d like to get more familiar with the classic hot wire technique, though, we can help there too. Video after the break.
another advantage of this over hot-wire cut wings is that the mold is reusable...

The global solar market is booming, and the Chinese inverter exports reach a record level in 2019 H1. According the data of China Customs, Huawei exported 113,086 inverters in the first half of the year and ranked No.1 among the Chinese inverter manufacturers. Growatt came after Huawei in the second place with 86,153 inverter exports, and Ginlong Solis in the third place with 78,114 inverter exports. GoodWe, Sungrow, SofarSolar and SolaX follow in the inverter export ranking.
As shown in below chart, Huawei, Growatt, Solis and GoodWe are in the first tier inverter manufacturers that has exported over 70,000 inverters.
The strong growth of Netherlands PV market has absorbed a large number of the Chinese inverter exports. Growatt shipped 43,487 inverters to Netherlands in the first half of 2019 and Huawei shipped 34,230 inverters, GoodWe 29,233 inverters,Solis 6,228 inverters, Sungrow 3,550 inverters and SofarSolar 8,849 inverters respectively.
The renewable energy sector in UK is observed with growth momentum, which benefits Solis and SolarX. Overall, the Chinese inverter manufacturers exported to key European solar markets, Netherlands, Italy,UK. And Belgium and Poland were view...

Chris Jericho just learned that defending his brand new All Elite Wrestling World Champion belt is a full-time job.
The wrestling great became the fledgling promotion’s inaugural champion on Saturday, beating Adam Page at All Out in Chicago to win the sport’s newest belt.
Winning the AEW belt added yet another highlight to Jericho’s 29-year career, which has bounced from promotion through the years.
The victorious Jericho, belt in hand, then returned to Florida. One meal later, the belt was gone. The full details on what happened from Jericho’s point of view can be seen in this police report confirmed by reporter David Bixenspan as real:
The victim reported the theft of his championship wrestling belt while he was eating inside Longhorn Steakhouse. The victim stated he arrived at the Millionaire Club Airport Terminal and placed the belt inside his rented limousine. The limo driver shuttled the victim to Longhorn for dinner. The victim remained at Longhorn while the limo driver returned to the airport. The victim had taken the wrong luggage from the airport and the driver took it back to the terminal. When the driver picked up the victim from the restaurant, the belt was missing...

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The refractory tungsten alloys with high ductility/strength/plasticity are highly desirable for a wide range of critical applications. Here we report an interface design strategy that achieves 8.5 mm thick W-0.5 wt. %ZrC alloy plates with a flexural strength of 2.5 GPa and a strain of 3% at room temperature (RT) and ductile-to-brittle transition temperature of about 100 °C. The tensile strength is about 991 MPa at RT and 582 MPa at 500 °C, as well as total elongation is about 1.1% at RT and as large as 41% at 500 °C, respectively. In addition, the W-ZrC alloy plate can sustain 3.3 MJ/m2 thermal load without any cracks. This processing route offers the special coherent interfaces of grain/phase boundaries (GB/PBs) and the diminishing O impurity at GBs, which significantly strengthens GB/PBs and thereby enhances the ductility/strength/plasticity of W al...

Custom Profile in partnership with Mosaic Capital Partners LLC, has purchased all of the company’s equity from private equity owners Blackford Capital LLC.
The move allows Custom Profile, based in Walker, Mich., to operate as a 100 percent employee-owned company through an employee stock ownership plan.
Custom Profile was first sold in 2012 by founder Sam Nicholas to Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Blackford Capital for an undisclosed amount. Nicholas started the company in 1992.
Custom Profile extrudes plastic parts for the office furniture, appliance, medical, point-of-purchase and recreational and RV industries, using compounds such as ABS, rigid and flexible PVC, PET, thermoplastic elastomers, polycarbonate and others.
The company employs about 230 people across two Michigan locations: its headquarters and manufacturing facility in Walker and a second manufacturing facility in Grand Rapids. It also employs about 150 at a manufacturing facility in Juarez, Mexico. The employees in Mexico are not eligible for the ESOP.
CEO John Boeschenstein said during a brief phone call with Plastics News that the deal means employees can now “share in the prosperity.”
“With the new capitali...

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It was a long time ago, almost seventy years back. Not many people still in this world can recall with confidence what they were doing on December 31, 1952.
But Joe Bullen remembers. That New Year’s Eve, his friend Morey Bernstein threw a party. It was one of the most memorable parties of Bullen’s life.
Bullen and Bernstein were young, up-and-coming captains of industry. They had graduated from Pueblo’s Centennial High School a few years apart, each at the top of his class. After college they’d moved into management positions in thriving family businesses. The Bullen Bridge Company built dozens of steel bridges across southern Colorado before evolving into a concrete company. Bernstein Brothers was a heavy-equipment supplier with a national clientele. Both men were pragmatic, hard-driving executives, with zero interest in metaphysical mysteries or cosmic hoo-ha.
Or so Bullen thought, right up until that night. Shortly after he and his wife, Betty, arrived at Bernstein’s place, they were intercepted by their host.
“He told us, ‘Forget about th...

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Bath towels are something we use at least once a day, yet the perfect one can be frustratingly hard to find. Whether you prefer something fluffy and plush or something waffled and fast-drying, we can all agree on the importance of a towel that’s soft, absorbent, and looks good after hundreds of uses and wash cycles. To find the best towels — the ones that are as good-looking as they are absorbent and durable — we asked eight interior designers and decorators to single out their go-tos. These are the ones they select for both client projects and their own homes. (As for the Twitter debate when Abdul Dremali asked how many bath towels a person should own — New York contributor Yashar Ali thinks five towels and five sheets each — we think four bath towels per person is a reasonable number.)
When shopping for your everyday bath towels, interior designer Ariel Okin says, “you want to take into account quality and durability. Especially for towels, which get washed a lot and sometimes bleached, investing in high-quality [ones] is a smart move.” Among her top...

The star turn of most hackspaces and other community workshops is usually a laser cutter. An expensive and fiddly device that it makes much more sense to own collectively than to buy yourself.
This isn’t to say that laser cutters are outside the budget of the experimenter though, we’re all familiar with the inexpensive table-top machines from China. Blue and white boxes that can be yours for a few hundred dollars, and hold the promise of a real laser cutter on your table.
Owning one of these machines is not always smooth sailing though, because their construction and choice of components are often highly variable. A thorough check and often a session of fixing the non-functional parts is a must before first power-on.
[Extreme Electronics] bought one, and in a series of posts documented the process from unboxing to cutting. Starting with a full description of the machine and what to watch for out of the box, then a look at the software. A plugin for Corel Draw was supplied, along with a dubious copy of Corel Draw itself. Finally we see the machine in operation, and the process of finding the proper height for beam focus by cutting an inclined plane of acrylic.
The series rounds o...

By laying the groundwork now, Able Tool will be prepared for the day when machine shops are commonly called to produce metal parts via additive manufacturing.
The Metal X is a fused-filament fabrication printer that builds parts by laying down layers of material, until a part builds up.
If you would’ve visited Able Tool before 2003, you never would’ve pegged the Cincinnati-area machine shop as one actively investing in the latest manufacturing technology. Back then, a quick glance around the shop would show mostly toolroom-style equipment. However, that began to change when Paul Hayes took over as company president. For the business to thrive, he knew the operation would have to take a quantum leap by adopting much more advanced technology. Today, Able Tool’s shop floor consists of four- and five-axis machining centers and large horizontals and wire EDM. On-machine spindle and tool probes have reduced setup time on that equipment and enables in-process inspection for more effective process control.
The company’s commitment to adopting new technology didn’t end there. About six years ago, Mr. Hayes decided to take additive manufacturing from a concept he’d researched to a process...